Enable Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Vista

I have been getting tired of the Name+Icon login style of Vista for some time now. I want to force users to press CTRL-ALT-DEL, then type their username and password.

There are a few reasons for this. I have account names that I don’t want others to see. If they know that the username exists, that gives them one more piece of the puzzle.

Secondly, forcing CTRL-ALT-DEL adds another level of security. Why? Because this feature is difficult to implement without having administrative access to the system. This means as long as my machine has not been infected with something then I know that I am typing my username and password into Vista, and not some password capture program.

I searched around to see if there were settings I could change to make this happen. The easiest solution I came up with is accomplished by changing two registry settings.

First lets start out with clearing out username field. I want it to show me a blank username and password screen when logging in.

This registry key does the trick:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Find the value named ‘DontDisplayLastUserName’ and set it to 1 (If you don’t see it, then create a new DWORD item with this value)

Now when you logoff you will see the new login screen:

That fixes that. Now lets force CTRL-ALT-DEL. This can be enabled by drilling down to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Find the value named ‘DisableCAD’ and set it to 0 (If you don’t see it, again…create a new DWORD item with this value)

Now when you get to the login screen you will be forced to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to login

Ahh…Finally the Vista login is the way I like it.